Mesa author explores '50s musician's death

Mesa author Steve Bergsman has a new book that his publicist says "brings the world of 1950s rhythm and blues to vivid life through the fictionalized story of real-life musician Johnny Ace.

In the early 1950s, Ace, a young African-American Navy veteran and church organist, became a star by playing with music legends like B.B. King, Ike Turner and Bobby Bland.

"The Death of Johnny Ace" examines his untimely death, which was said to have occurred at a Christmas concert in 1954 during a game of Russian roulette backstage.

The novel examines whether he thought he could beat Russian roulette one more time, or whether there was a more sinister nature to his untimely demise.

Bergsman, 63, has contributed to a number of newspapers and magazines for more than 25 years and has written five books. Recently, The Republic interviewed him by e-mail.

Question: How long have you lived in Mesa?

Answer: "Although I wasn't born or raised in Mesa, my wife and I moved here in 1976. Both my boys were born in Mesa, went through the school system and graduated from Mountain View High School. One works for a hedge fund and lives in New York City and the other is a surgeon in Charlotte, N.C."

Q: Tell us about your career.

A: I'm a full-time journalist, travel writer and author and have been for the last 25 years. Over that time, I've contributed to a wide range of magazines, newspapers and wire services, including New York Times, Wall Street Journal Sunday, Global Finance, Executive Decision, Chief Executive, the Australian, Investment Dealer's Digest Professional Report, Institutional Real Estate Letter, Mortgage Banking, Toronto's HomeFront Magazine, Inman News, Reuters News Service, Copley News Service and Creator's Syndicate.

Q: What inspired you to write about Johnny Ace?

A: I'm a rock 'n' roll junkie and Johnny Ace's death is one of the great mysteries of the genre. Since nobody really knows what happened that Christmas Eve night in 1954 when Johnny Ace allegedly shot himself in the head, this allowed me to investigate and give my opinion in the form of novel. Secondly, I always thought Johnny Ace, who had a dedicated, cultish following in the urban African-American world in the early 1950s, has been almost completely forgotten, when he should be in the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame.

Q: What other books have you written?

A: This is my sixth book. My last book, "Growing Up Levittown: In a Time of Conformity, Controversy and Cultural Crisis," was published last year and is a memoir/social history of Levittown, N.Y., the first modern suburb in America. My first four books were about real estate.

"Maverick Real Estate Investing" and "Maverick Real Estate Financing" were the most successful and are still sought out today. My least successful was "Passport to Exotic Real Estate," which came out in September 2008, just as our financial world was falling apart. It has since become kind of a cult item and a "new" printing of the book sells for $275 on Amazon.